I “Was” a good kid

Fast forward to court. I was a good kid with no criminal record. The judge told me if I did a few things I would not be facing jail time or a criminal record. If I did not do those things I would be charged with 2 felonies and 3 misdemeanor charges.

Sweet! What do I have to do? I had to do community service hours… like 100 of them. So, while most of my friends were finishing up the last few months of high school I was cleaning the local Walmart and drove around with a cop visiting local homes that had complaints from their neighbors about hoarding issues. Gross.

I had to write these apology letters to my parents and present them to the judge about how much I was sorry for my behaviors and that I was a changed person. Done. Manipulative stories were my specialty.

The last thing I had to do was stay sober. That was the kicker. Okay so up till this point I figured if I wanted to stop using opiates I could. I never really had a reason to. Sure my parents were mad at me all the time but that was not enough of a reason to stop. Now I was facing some pretty serious consequences if I kept smoking those little blue fuckers and I knew I did not have a choice.

I of course did not want to stop but I HAD to stop.

I’ll Put it in My Calendar

I started to play mad scientist. Basically, I knew that I was going to be drug tested on the 1st of every month and that I better have these bad boys out of my system by then.

Since I was smoking the pills instead of snorting or eating them they should stay in my system for around 48 hours. So that meant until about the 28th of the month I was good to go!
I kept doing the same thing.

My mom did not get it. She would see me at night and bow her head in shame. She would just keep saying to me, “with everything on the line, how could you? You have everything to lose including your college scholarship. How will you pay for college if you lose that? Kiss your future goodbye if you end up a convicted felon.”

None of that mattered. I knew I would stop on the 28th and I would pass. I just had to get through 90 days of this stuff and I would be free to live life again. Suddenly it was the 28th of the month. I could not stop. I had every reason in the world not hit the foil with a lighter and smoke those fumes sliding off the top, but I could not stop. I had to do it. Then came the 29th. Same story. I had to get high. I could not say no to the voices in my head. My body screamed for it. Then came the 30th. I really had to stop now. My test was tomorrow. I was going to fail. What do I do now? How can I get out of this?

Breaking Down

Got it! I picked up the phone and called my probation officer. I told him not one but all four of my tires were flat! I would need to push back the test till Monday when I could drive over to take it. No problem he said. Okay phew. Got him taken care of. But now I had to deal with mommy dearest.

How do I get out of trouble with her? I got it. I called Mom that Friday afternoon and confessed.
“Mom, I have a problem I cannot stop using drugs”. I was crying hard when I said this. I think I was on the floor while I was on the phone with her. I can picture being on the floor in the hallway that day is etched into my memory.

I meant those things I said. I was sorry, I could not stop and I was scared. She hung up on me.

See my family did not understand. My mom thought I had a choice and I was choosing to do these things, that I was choosing these poor behaviors. She could also see through by BS that I was only saying these things because I did not want to get in trouble not because I really wanted to stop using drugs.

When she got home it was awkward silence. The type of silence that the expression “you could hear a pin drop” was coined from. It was bad. She was so mad at me.

As I sat at the kitchen table with her I told her that I was done and that my drug test was pushed back to Monday. She told me I was very lucky and that I was crazy if I thought I was leaving the house for anything that weekend. WHAT?! I did not have a drug test till Monday that meant I could get high today… Friday. What do you mean I can’t leave the house? I tried every excuse in the world for her to allow me to run out of the house for just a few minutes. I needed to get high. I had to get high. She held firm.

When I tell you that I wanted to get high with every single fiber of my being that day I mean it. It was hell on earth. Wanting to get high but not being able to. I started to detox within several hours. My detox usually consisted of coughing all night. I had smoked so much foil that my cough was so bad it felt like I would break a rib. I could not sleep and the physical pain was unbearable.

Monday came I passed the test. Yay! Back to the routine get high until the 28th.

No Matter Where You Go… You Take Yourself With You.

Insanity. Pure insanity. I had gotten away with it once there was no way I could pull that off again. What do I do? It has been less than a month since I was “arrested” I had one month left of senior year of high school and if I stayed in my hometown there was 0.00% chance I would stay sober and avoid jail and a mug shot.

Idea. College! I had been accepted into my dream college. I of course in my drug induced haze had no real plan of attending, because why mess up a good thing?

But things were horrible at best. I am going to go to college and get out of this town. That is the answer. Goals. Dreams. Better people. They don’t do drugs in college! This is the answer.

I told my mom of my great plan. She sat me on the black leather couch in the living room while she paced back and forth. “No matter where you go… you take yourself with you. You cannot escape who you are.” Cool saying, I thought but so wrong! I got this. I will go to college and totally be fine. So less than a month later I packed up my little car and headed north for summer classes.

I had to get a counselor in college as part of my probation. I had to meet with her once a month while I finished out my 90-day probation. I passed the rest of my drug tests as I was unable to get my hands on any drugs during those first 2 months up there… but I did discover my new-found love of alcohol. Natural Ice? Hello broke college life!

Magical Pill Mills

Okay done. Probation was finished. Felony free. Time to party and now no mom checking my pupils with a flash light when I come home. It was go time. While I was living in student apartments and attending class, I would split my time between college and my hometown. See the pill mills were really big back then and it was so easy for me to get my hands-on scripts of my own. I would go to some doctor and complain about back pain. Give some sad story about how I just want to be normal and my pain and anxiety are destroying my life. Boom. I would get 180 Roxicodone’s and 90 valiums in under 20 minutes. Life was so good.

One time as we waited to fill our scripts at a pharmacy a cop came up to the vehicle. We were all high off opiates as we had just finished smoking some pills. We had a prescription in each of our names and he had to let us go. This was like the best thing ever.

Several weeks later when I went to make my next appointment I found out that doctor was killed in a car accident. Game over for us all.

It did not take long for me to make new friends in college and get my hands on those pills again. Sometimes I would smoke crack. Sometimes I would smoke heroin. Sometimes I would drink my weight in Canadian whiskey. Nothing completed me more than those A215 pills.

I was functioning okay in college I made good grades but always had to drop one class each semester. I was working in sales and making easily $1,000.00 a week which supplied my nice drug habit. I was living in a house with 2 of my friends and we partied every single night. There was not one sober day in my entire 2.5-year college career. I would drink and drive. I would wake up in places I did not know how I got there. I even once called the cops on myself for drinking and driving. True story. I was a wreck.